Offline with Jon Favreau - Hasan Piker on the Bro Vote, Kamala Harris, and the 2024 Election

Episode Date: October 13, 2024

Hasan Piker, Gen Z’s favorite left wing political commentator and Twitch streamer, joins Offline to talk about the Trump campaign’s bro-first election strategy, the right wing’s dominance of the digital media landscape, and why, 25 days until the election, he’s feeling mostly…tired. Jon and Hasan debate the Biden-Harris policy agenda, particularly with regard to immigration and Israel-Palestine, and Hasan shares how he avoids burnout while talking politics live for 50 hours a week. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

I live my life on camera for the most part, and I'm very fortunate and very privileged to be able to do so. For me, I feel like that kind of stuff is what keeps me away from burning out because like I will still, of course, cover politics. That's my interest. That's what I love to do. That's what I find a lot of emotional fulfillment in. And I will continue doing it. But in order to mitigate burnout, in order to stop it from from happening i realized that i wasn't doing like eight hours of news coverage usually i'm doing like six hours of news coverage maybe two hours of video games or four hours of news coverage and then a couple hours of like lifestyle culture things like that you know fun different fun segments that i engage in and then uh you know doing irl streams like and and participating in in other stuff when don't do that, when I don't have a healthy diet of that, and it's just all news for eight to 10 hours, poll watching, having, you know,

people on to interview them and talk to them over and over again every single day, it does definitely it does definitely start taking a toll. I'm Jon Favreau, and you just heard from today's guest, Twitch streamer and political commentator, Hasan Piker. Hasan is a repeat offline guest. We first had him on in the spring of 2023 to talk about topics such as the strengths and weaknesses of Joe Biden's campaign. Obviously, a few things have changed since then, so I wanted to talk to him about a few things that are on my mind with about three weeks to go until election day. Namely, what both campaigns are doing to target young men, why right-wing garbage is still dominating the media ecosystem, and how he feels about the vibes here in the final stretch. I also talked

to him about his day job. For those who don't know, Hassan is one of Gen Z's most influential political commentators and a proud leftist. Seven days a week for eight hours a day, he streams to his 2.7 million Twitch subscribers, talking about politics and breaking news in real time. It sounds exhausting, but I'm glad he's out there, even if our politics don't always line up. And as a quick note, we are getting right to the interview this week. Max will be back with us next week. Here's Hasan Piker. Hasan Piker, welcome back.

Thank you for having me. It's good to be back. You made it. I did. It was tumultuous. It was rough. I had a car accident situation this time around. Last time I was here, I had just adopted my puppy, and she was a menace, not letting me sleep at all.

There's always something going on. There's always something when you come to Crooked Media. I don't know what it is. I think last time you were on, it was like spring of 2023. Just a few minor political developments since then. Nothing too significant has occurred, right? I mean, get into. Yeah.

Joe Biden's, you know, looking not that great in the polls right now. Right now. We'll see. I don't know if he can pull it out. Yeah. Want to start with the Politico story from this week on a topic that you and I have talked about before. The headline is inside Trump's push to win over

the bro vote. Uh, this is about Trump doing a lot of the manosphere podcast, the Ovan, Andrew Schultz, uh, Logan Paul, Lex Friedman, the rest. He's got the Nelk boys doing a voter registration drive. There are tailgates UFC fights. They're advertising on sports gambling sites. What, uh, what's your overall take on Trump's bro strategy? I think he is smartly looking at like he's smartly looking at a situation where he already has hemorrhaged his base of support. And those that remain are not exactly enough to push him across the finish line for a victory in the Electoral College. And if you can't tap into people that either voted for you and now hate you, or voted for you and love you and will vote for you again, or will never vote for you and hate you, then what remains?

Younger male voters, low propensity voters overall from every demographic that might not have even voted last election cycle because they were too young and too young to even like fully comprehend what it was like to live under the Trump administration, or voters that have never really voted that that might vote this time around if they are successfully activated by Trump. That's like the only that's the last remaining area of voters you could go to. And normally this would be a risky gamble if you were a normal Republican. But when you're Trump and you get almost assassinated twice and that still doesn't even move the needle a little bit for you in the polls you just got to look at other avenues

um the problem with a lot of those people is that they are virtually impossible to poll and they are uh i feel like they're they're hard to to to figure out if they're going to go out and vote at all right yeah so that's the reason why the dynamic has shifted every single election cycle democrats say oh we got turnout if it's going to be a high turnout election then we're going to win right it's not like that anymore right now if this becomes a high turnout election very likely donald trump will win if it's a low turnout election, the Democrats will win because, uh, out of the, uh, out of the groups that people out of the groups that normally do go

out and vote, it seems like there is a, uh, there was a definite edge for Joe, Joe Biden before the debate for sure. And there was a definite edge in 2020. And that was his electoral calculus. Now, it seems like the dynamic has shifted a little bit with Kamala Harris, but they're still bouldering towards that. They're still bouldering towards the the suburbs like they're they're genuinely pushing for the suburban educated white college educated white voter. We were talking about this on Positive America yesterday, but I was looking at some polling they broke out by types of voters, how often they vote,

high engagement voters, people in the last four elections, you know, Kamala's winning them by four points as Biden was. Low propensity voters or mid propensity voters, people who've like skipped one of the four last elections trump's uh winning those voters by by less than he was with biden but still by like

seven points i think yeah but but that's a larger percentage overall than kamala's uh victory over high propensity voters well that's the thing it's a bigger pool. But then new registrants since 22, Biden was losing by 10 and Kamala was winning by 13. So there is like an X factor there in like the brand new voters who look a little different than these low propensity voters. But that's why I think no one knows what the fuck's going on. that men, especially young men, have been drifting to the right over the last few years, some moving to Trump, some moving to RFK Jr., some just no longer supporting Democrats. I guess, do you buy that? And if so, what do you think is causing that shift? Oh, no, I absolutely buy it. I see it. I experience it. I am a political commentator on Twitch. It's a heavily male dominated space. I'm friends with some of the people that have interviewed Donald Trump. I know them personally, like Mike Malak is a good friend of mine. He's a great guy. He's the co-host of Logan Paul's

podcast Impulsive. He wrote a book about his own journey through in his own struggle through addiction um he's a he's a fantastic dude uh can't say the same about logan but that's besides the point but or i know andrew schultz i've been on that podcast that trump was on recently uh flagrant so like i know their fan bases i've been on these podcasts i talk to these guys and i also know like i'm in this space so i see it every day there is a massive amount of right-wing radicalization that has been occurring especially in younger male spaces everything is completely dominated by right-wing politics uh all of the hobbies if you're if you're a dude under the end of like uh uh obama's uh administration but like definitely center right to trumpian right like

openly trump right not like genuinely neo-nazi that that part is uh quieted down a little bit but like they're like 90 of the way there for the most part. And and that's it. Everything that they see is is right wing sentiment being expressed by individuals that they find charismatic thought leaders, influencers that they subscribe to. And and I think that that is some of the reason why you see this movement. Um, that's a normal situation that occurs when you have a democratic president. When Joe Biden, uh, when Joe Biden became the candidate, uh, one of my locks all the way back in, uh, 20, like in the 2020 cycle was, oh, we're just going to go back to the same culture war stuff very quickly. We're going to snap back to, uh, a lot of the, uh, a lot of the same exact sentiments sentiments like women in video games are like ruining.

Woke is ruining this. Woke is ruining M&Ms. And they did. They very quickly snapped back into that comfortable space that existed under the Trump administration as well. But it was a harder argument to make to convince people when, you know, Trump was the president. Why do you still feel angry is a question i would ask right-wingers all the time i was like your president is the president right now you still feel angry you still think it's trans people that's like fucking up

your life he's the president he could be fixing your problems but your material problems remain the same even under this leadership uh just like they existed under the former leadership of obama so maybe it's not these like uh culture war issues as fucking up your life and um and of course younger uh audiences back then i would say were significantly more uh left leaning like that culture uh under the trump administration was the quote unquote resist culture all the way from liberals screaming about even abolishing ICE, which is a position that I have maintained for years. But I did not ever expect like a like a brunch wine mom podcast enjoyer of, you know, crooked media to turn around and be like, yeah, we really need to abolish the department of homeland security and restructure it like that's a wild position but we got to that point because there was a it was it was culturally permissible right and we have snapped completely back in the opposite direction uh under the the biden administration under the biden leadership

and of course uh when you have a liberal leadership, there's going to be resentment from younger audiences that are still, once again, feeling the same material harms that younger generations experience on a regular basis. And inevitably, that breeds hostility, that breeds resentment. And it creates a lot of vulnerable men who are looking for answers. And I think a lot of right-wing podcasters and the manosphere and the like take advantage of that. And they do a very good job of taking advantage of it. They're like, oh, yeah, you're angry. It's you're angry because trans people exist. You're angry because women are taking your jobs.

Like, they should be going back to a traditional lifestyle and it's like if you're like a 14 year old boy who's vulnerable who's mad uh who's emotional and you see that kind of stuff you're like well yeah i'm gonna believe the guy with the nice car telling me that it's not my fault it's actually the fault of all of these systemic problems um and that's what's going on i mean you bring up a really good point, which is that it sounds that the resentment and anger is sort of anti-institution, anti-establishment, and that it is harder to maintain that if you're the right-wing manosphere or whatever when a Trump is president than when someone else is president. Because you're upset with the status quo and so who are you going to be upset with yeah the people who are in charge yeah but I mean right-wing manosphere guys were popping off when Trump was president as well for sure it's just

that overall there's always there's always going to be a space for right-wing content creators especially outside of mainstream voices but they get like a lot of elevation for mainstream platforms anyway especially with like tucker carlson back in the day at fox news like fox news will have any right-wing person of any demographic as long as they say the appropriate things um they have a they certainly have a good focus on, on building this infrastructure, this, this communications infrastructure that spans far beyond their own network. And they do a pretty good job with that. And no such thing exists for liberal, the liberal side of media. Um, that does not exist. I like you might every now and then go on, uh, shows, right. But even that's rare. Yeah. And you

fucking were the speechwriter for barack obama like you're not you know what i mean you're not like a random upstart in the same way that like charlie kirk is an example i use all the time this person is now an institutional part he's doing turnout strategies on the ground in arizona right now with turning Point USA. How did Charlie Kirk get his start? He wrote a high school paper that was highlighted on Breitbart, and immediately they were like, get on Fox News right now. We need this kid on Fox News. And that's how he became this person. And he used that platform very quickly to go to Foster Freeze

and all these right-wing donors to set up Turning Point USA. So the right has a very good way of packaging anyone and everyone that that even leans a little bit to the right or completely is right wing. They identify them, whereas and highlight them and make them into like media figureheads. And there's plenty of money there as well because obviously there's plenty of billionaires and millionaires that want to fund and and uh and continue this flow of propaganda because they recognize the importance of that whereas like i said no such reality exists on the left especially and it doesn't even exist for like the liberal side of things either. No, that's true. I'm very interested in like what is appealing to young men about the manosphere stuff, Trump, all of that. I mean, data shows that young men

are now less likely to go to college than young women, less likely to graduate, more likely to live with their parents, more likely to spend time alone, struggle with loneliness. And of course, you know, you throw in the internet and social media and you've got a real recipe for radicalization or at least alienation from institutions. Yeah. How do you tease out whether economic forces are driving this, material forces are driving this, material concerns or cultural? Like, how do you how do you see the interplay between them well i mean i always think like material realities drive culture in general like you can't uh you can't really like culture your way out of this if that was the case then i mean mainstream media in general is is fairly liberal and from where i'm standing

the way i understand the world they're're definitely center right. Right. But overall, they are still considered liberal. They're certainly more progressive and more liberal than like Fox News and all these other outlets on the right. But culturally, at least. Yeah, for sure. When it comes to well, yeah, we're not even talking about fiscal policy. We're talking about like, you know, social stuff. But I think that at the end of the day, it is much harder to radicalize people if they're in a, if they have a hope for the future. It's much harder to radicalize people if they feel as though they can get an honest job and make a living, get a living wage, have a car, or have a wonderful city with an infrastructure that's designed, that is walkable, that you can get on a bus and roam the city around in where you're around this diverse diverse uh population and that uh you know that you're inevitably going to be able to retire you know that you're inevitably going to be able to buy a

home it's much harder to radicalize people like that it's much easier on the other hand to radicalize people uh against uh or for right-wing sentiment and reactionary sentiment when they're in dire constraints. I'll give you the example of Springfield, Ohio. Springfield, Ohio is a very poor town. It was a very poor town. It still is a very poor town. It's actually on the up and up, similar to a hazeltown situation in Pennsylvania. A lot of Haitian migrants went to Springfield, Ohio. Their taxable revenue actually went up. There was need for workers there. And that's why they were like, oh shit, let's just move here. Let's work here. Similar with Hazeltown in Pennsylvania. Town was on the verge of insolvency and Latino migrants start coming in and they start building businesses and the town is

flourishing. That happened under the Trump administration. That's why I'm using that as an example. So in that process, obviously, Springfield, Ohio became a major point of contention, a major talking point, because Republicans, all the way from J.D. Vance to Donald Trump, started lying in the most unimaginably racist way possible by claiming that the Haitian migrants were just eating cats and dogs. These are people who are multilingual. Trump started lying in the most unimaginably racist way possible by claiming that like the Haitian migrants were just eating cats and dogs these are people who are multilingual like they speak like four languages yeah like they're they're doctors and engineers and shit that are

now driving uber right as is the case with most immigrants that come into this country that like escaped uh horrifying conditions back home conditions that we contributed to mind you but let's not even get into that but ultimately they are making the town better but the people that live there are very frustrated and uh when you when you listen to them when you listen to all the people that were interviewed by you know insane right-wing youtubers that went there and swarmed the town like a bunch of goddamn vultures and was putting we're putting microphones to every psycho that you could find in the town that was like, yeah, they're eating cats and dogs. I promise I saw it. I saw a van full of cats like all this shit. You you start to recognize that like these people don't feel this way because

they're just like truly evil. They're saying evil shit, but they feel this way because they're just like truly evil they're saying evil shit but they feel this way because if you listen to their stories you start recognizing oh the social safety nets were crippled here like this is a town that was completely left behind and in that vacuum uh in that in that dire poverty that they were experiencing they started developing resentment and And right wingers very cleverly pointed to the people that don't look like you, that might not speak English all too well for now. Right. And that was it. That is the same exact principle we saw in Sweden that had, you know, a flourishing social democratic regime for many, many years. And then austerity kicked in and all of this like anti-Muslim, anti-refugee sentiments started baking into society far before there was a significant number of Muslim refugees that actually even came to Sweden. They were already primed and ready to go. And now when you look at it, it's like their liberal parties

are just like straight Nazis at this point. And you see it all over Europe. You see it everywhere. Austerity comes in. People start feeling the hurt. People start recognizing that the things that used to work, that they took for granted, whether the buses were running on time,

whether the infrastructure was like fine, is no longer working in the same way and you're like man shit kind of sucks now what's going on there and then someone someone goes yeah it does suck you know why because black people are here you know why because muslims are here now and they go okay that makes sense yeah yeah well i did in all of it's interesting you bring that up because in all the discussion about Springfield, I sort of had this thought, too, where the pushback to the Trump-Vance story about Springfield is, well, actually, Springfield over the last couple of years has been doing really well. And there's been a lot of prosperity and it's been great. And, you know, it's sort of like the same stats people use. The Biden administration used to do that with like, actually, it's the greatest economy we've ever had. Everything's great, right?

It can both be true that Springfield has grown and it has benefited economically from all these immigrants moving there and there's more jobs and there's more opportunity. That can all be true. And yet it's still a community where housing And yet, it's still a community where housing is expensive. It's still a community where the hospitals are stretched thin, where the infrastructure doesn't always work, right. And so I think we sometimes skip over the fact that yes, these resentments still can be sort of heightened by the right coming in. And like, like people still have problems. I saw this interesting study that, uh, it wasn't necessarily, it's not necessarily like the poorest, poorest

people who become MAGA, but people in smaller cities and towns that have been left behind, who may be middle class within that city, but have seen the city become left behind in post-industrial America. And that resentment towards some of the poorer people in that city who tend to be people of color or tend to be migrants, that gets them more radicalized. So they actually have an okay standard of living, but not quite as good as what they're seeing in cities and on instagram and on social media and that sort of drives a lot of the the trumpist no for sure i think i mean you see that in in los angeles like the housing market is completely fucked every two years californians go and vote for ballot measures that are like let's kill landlords uh proposition and they're like oh my god i love

that and then they vote by like you know 30 margins they're like they love that bill they love that ballot initiative and then it i mean i'm obviously exaggerating for those at home don't be afraid but but then you know it gets held up or it gets outsourced to a contractor that like takes the money takes the taxable revenue and then like doesn't do anything with it and holds it up purposefully. And there's never any initiative. So the housing market and the housing prices keep going up, which is really good if you are a homeowner and have a mortgage on your house and you take that for granted and you take the expectation that your housing prices are going to go up year after year. And you can maybe even refinance later down or you could take a second loan out if you wanted to. You know, that's like your vehicle for wealth accumulation.

And when you take that for granted, you're like, oh, it's great that it still keeps going up. But 66% of Californians are renters. And for them, when the housing prices are going up rent is going up and when rent is going up they get priced out of the housing market when they get priced out of the housing market they go down this death spiral of homelessness uh and and they first start couch surfing they maintain a job but then that becomes really hard and they're living out of their car and then they inevitably become the homeless person that you see on the sidewalk like that has tattered clothes and is like definitely hasn't been

taken care of by the government for years and years and has uh withstood a lot of trauma and is very clearly in a dire mental health situation as a direct consequence of not having shelter and people see that and they're like well i'm a progressive guy but i think we should kill that person like that's literally what it is like that's why you that that's why there's so much like uh cognitive dissonance surrounding uh subjects like this and you see that radicalization occur because once again the system has failed people and the system has left people behind and people see that and develop resentment

you're obviously further to the left than kamala harris most like the democrats um so i know you have some some real substantive policy differences with the democratic ticket i also know you really don't want donald trump to win um what do you think the harris waltz campaign is doing well and what could they be doing better if you ask me this question when, when Tim Walz was chosen as the vice president, I would give you an entirely different speech because I was very hopeful for the first time ever because I was genuinely confused as to how the Democratic Party was behaving in a competent way because I'm so used to where I'm standing. Obviously, I'm very biased. I'm very biased I'm very leftist I'm much further out from like I'm much further left than the than the Democratic Party is but I do think that like a lot of people

feel the same way that I do even if they don't communicate those desires or tack it on to any sort of ideological framework they like most people my age group and younger are like yeah I want health care like can we please get that Or student loan debt relief sounds like a good idea. Like I would like that, like lighten my burden, please. It seems like, uh, you know, or it seems like the world is going to end anytime now. Climate change is, is devastating the country. Uh, don't know if I'll ever be able to retire. Like these are attitudes that a lot of people have. And, um, and that's my background from where I'm standing. Of course, I don't think the democratic party does enough, even lip service to these constituencies, uh, historically, and they, uh, certainly haven't done it since the swap out happened i think with some exceptions um when kamala harris first uh came on

board uh i was a big advocate for obviously getting biden to drop out because i saw the writing on the wall pretty early on i mean i was as most as most americans yeah as most americans did which is like a very unique perspective in media or was a very unique perspective in media at the time um and now we just like act like how ridiculous that like that we think back at it and like how ridiculous would it be right now python was still in the race like um but ultimately it was a unique moment because like the democratic party responded to public pressure now of course they responded to donor pressure as well and they responded to establishment democrats like uh my queen nancy pelosi but but they are queen yeah our queen nancy pelosi

like they responded to that and they were like oh we gotta we gotta change this so and and the people responded very positively to that with billions of dollars of fundraising yeah that they can now tout as a massive war chest right um that to me was unique because the democratic party going along with biden like riding with biden all the way to the end is like typical old school democratic party operation um so i thought maybe things would be different and then then they didn't pick Josh Shapiro. They picked Tim Walz. And I was like, what the hell is going on? Because Josh Shapiro is, again, classic Democratic Party. He's like relatively charismatic. He is conservative from not even from where I'm standing. I mean, he was he pushed for a right wing charter school bill, a school choice bill with the Republicans in his own state.

Like that's a that's as conservative as you can get for you know for me at least like you're it's it immediately hurts teachers unions um and and from the perspective of a democratic analyst he's locking in pennsylvania right that's a two-point boost minimum that you're going to get if you get the governor of pennsylvania on the ticket so that would have been a perfect choice for them, I think, to go with if they were going to go the conservative route, is what I thought. Tim Walz paid family leave, protected abortion, protected medical access, did a whole bunch of stuff with a single seat majority in the state Senate in Minnesota. And, you know, it is pretty applicable to the American state of Congress.

If you look at it that way, it made me feel like the Democrats were basically going to sign on with Tim Walz. They were they were going to have to be on board with his policies and have to communicate that like, no, these are good things. Like what you consider to be radical or what you consider to be socialist or scary is actually good for the people. And people don't care. Republicans don't care. Yeah. As long as, you know, their kids are being fed in their public schools as well. Everybody likes that. And Tim Walz also was very good at communicating these desires. And he also was very good at attacking the Republican Party for all of the weird culture war phenomena that they consistently engage with. He called them weird. And it's something I've been doing for years and years. So I was like, oh, this is great.

Like, I can't believe the Democratic Party is like finally, you know, taking the fight back to the Republicans. And then the DNC happened and I was there and they were like, oh, just kidding. We're just, we're old school. Like we're going back to the same exact route. We're going to run to the middle. We're going to get as many Republicans in the suburbs as possible to come out and vote for us. We're going to go over the Nikki Haley constituency. And, and, you know, you can't do a damn thing about it. And we're going to tell you, you got to go out and vote for us. And if you don't, a damn thing about it and we're gonna tell you, you gotta go out and vote for us. And if you don't, then you want fascism to thrive.

If you don't, you want deportation, which is another issue that I have with Kamala Harris as well. But yeah, overall, I'm very critical in two different brackets. I'm critical of the Democratic Party and their capitulation the right-wing framing on immigration because i think it's bad policy and it's bad politics

but i'm also like even if it was a successful strategy for this election i still think it is devastating for the future of this country to consistently move further and further right on this issue to inevitably create a reasonable ground for the next Republican competent administration to come in and just do full tilt fascism with concentration camps. Yeah. So on immigration, I mean, I tend to think that like global migration from the global South to the north is going to be like and climate change is going to accelerate this yeah and war and conflict is already accelerating it is going to be like the political issue for the net for the remainder of our lifetimes um and europe has dealt with this we dealt with this and the tough part is, and like, I've, you know, you, you talk to like progressive, seemingly

progressive voters, uh, in border States. And now, you know, like DeSantis's stunt, like busing migrants into, uh, into blue cities. Right. And, and then first it was a stunt and then they were just doing it because they didn't know where else to, to, to, you know, as people are coming over the border where else to put them yeah there's just no space in texas famously right yeah like i always think about when i think about like an area where there's just like not enough space i think of texas well it's like so you haven't i mean the way i see it is you have this underfunded broken immigration system you don't

have enough space you don't have like the courts are all fucking backed up right and so there's no way to to process all these asylum seekers uh consistent with the law so and yes texas has a lot of space but you need cities with services to send people right and so they said and now you've got like brandon johnson in chicago pretty progressive uh mayor by the Democratic Party standards. Yeah, for sure. I mean, he was like a DSA pig, but he's been a little underwhelming. Right. But even people like that being like, you know what?

We want to be welcome to migrants, but our surfaces are stretched too thin. We don't know what to do. And then you've got voters, Democratic voters, liberal voters. And so I agree that the policy is just all fucked. We could talk about that forever. don't know what to do and then you've got voters democratic voters liberal voters seeing and so i agree that the policy is just all fucked we could talk about that forever but politically like it is a real it is a real concern that voters have with immigration and the right very wisely um makes this an issue in the election well it's not they don't make this an issue in the election. Well, they don't make it an issue in the election. They never stop making it an issue.

Correct. You're right. Then that's the major problem here. I'm a firm believer, and there's polling data that I can point to if you want to get into it. I'm a firm believer that the average American voter, the median voter, is of two minds. They believe things that are inherently contradictory. And that bears itself out in the data if you actually look through it there's a pew center i think research that looked at asian

american voters and what their opinions on migration patterns are and i believe it was like 64 percent of asian america first of all 74 percent asian americans just like everyone else believes full tilt amnesty for daca right yeah for the dreamers that's consistent that's been like 90 throughout the entire yeah throughout the entire existence of the program and yet we you know we never get any uh headway on that because obviously it's just politics it sucks um courts that keep knocking at that yeah so you have that but then something very unique happens where they ask them um what do you think about offering pathways to amnesty for all undocumented migrants as long as they've like not caused any

commotion or done any crimes which is the overwhelming majority if not damn near the entirety of the undocumented migrant population they are responsible for less crime per capita but i won't get into that right now um and that number is 64 percent yeah and then they asked those exact same yeah and then they asked those same exact people what do you think about mass deportation 60 percent say yes i know i've been talking about this about people i i think it is people those people think that deportation is the people who are just arriving over the border this scenes they see from the border and I think if people knew what mass deportation in this country would look like,

will look like if Trump wins, where it's like raids and offices and homes. It did look like that when Trump was president. Tearing families apart and children separated. Like then I don't believe that's supportive. And then you got to house them. You got to concentrate these people in an area possibly a camp yeah I can't yeah uh so I don't think I don't think that would be as popular but I agree that it's just a really you know you it I agree then that

also that the Democrats but who's at fault then who is responsible for the counter messaging not existing I blame the democratic party because the democrats knew that the republicans were going to engage in this right-wing framing they never stopped doing it it's always there's always a caravan every two years it's so suspicious there's always a caravan that george soros paid for this coming from el salvador guatemala or wherever honduras right yeah because that's the only thing they have that's the only thing that they can point to and and engage with like right-wing hysteria on and and and lie about actively and if you don't counter message against that on the offseason you are going to allow the right to capture the space in its entirety you brought up the uh Greg Abbott Ron De desantis uh strategy which is so funny because ron desantis was

taking migrants from texas i know and shipping them elsewhere right in the country that's human trafficking that's illegal the democratic administration should have come down and swung the long dick of the law and shipped greg abbott into a supermax facility and then immediately been like no this this process as long as it's regulated and as long as there's proper paperwork in order not to overwhelm the facilities in the areas that you're sending these migrants to should be done methodically immediately fund it immediately go in I mean this is immigration as well so technically I think like there is more power in the executive authority to be able to move stuff around um immediately given more money to

new york more money to all of these cities in an effort to process and facilitate and integrate these people into society because when you see those rows and rows of migrants waiting inside of these like awful places in new york and or maybe even like overtaking hotels and whatnot the one question that people ask them is like what do you want out of this like what do you want out of this process they're like i want to work yeah and these guys want to fucking work and they could they could go out and work if they were processed faster the reason why they can't be processed faster is we're not allocating enough federal resources under a democratic leadership so if i was joe biden that's what i would have done but the reason well this is

the problem this is how it's actually this is emblematic of of how republicans have succeeded politically over i don't know how long now it's not just a messaging thing it is a policy thing which is that okay how do we get more funding for all the, to fix the immigration system, right? It's going to require more funding. It's going to require a path to citizenship, right? This is what Democrats have wanted since the Obama era, path to citizenship, all this kind of stuff. First 100 days of the Biden administration. First 100 days, right.

And Republicans, absolutely not. Never going to pass Congress. Don't want to give more funding. Don't want to do anything. So then the only thing becomes, okay, what can you do via executive action? Well, you can do, you can try to do dreamers, but courts are knocking that down. So then all you can do is more board. You can only do the security stuff, right? And you can only do the like kick them out stuff, right? So that's the only thing that you're allowed to do without Congress. And so then Congress hamstrings you and then says, look,

those fuckers screwed up everything. And, and now there's all these, and now in fairness too, there was an influx of migrants over since 2021, that was much larger than throughout the Trump era or the Obama era or whatever. Yeah. Because of COVID. Because of COVID. Yeah. So there was a, there was a, an influx that they were not prepared to deal with, um, which is, which is makes it a little tricky. But anyway, now we're way off topic with immigration. But it's good to talk about because I think that so much of the Harris-Walls campaign's challenges, you get like shot out of a cannon

with a couple months to go in the election. You've got to go to the DNC, right? And you actually, because the electorate is on a knife's edge in terms of like how closely divided it is and how close 2020 was, you do need the Haley voters. You need the suburb voters. You need the young voters. You need the low propensity voters. Like you need all of them. You do need a coalition that spans from fucking AOC to Joe Manchin to, to Liz Cheney, just to people who vote,

who support those people, not them necessarily. Okay. Well, Liz Cheney has like a supporter, right? She's like people who dig Cheney. Right.

But like people who these like suburban Republicans who used to vote for Mitt Romney, who then voted for Joe Biden, you need them. You need the kids who like Bernie, you need the working class folks who maybe worked, voted for Obama.. You need them. You need the kids who like Bernie. You need the working class folks who maybe worked, voted for Obama. And then like you need all of them and trying to hold that coalition together against a minority coalition that keeps winning elections because of

the electoral college and a whole bunch of other shit is a real bitch. No, I'm not. I'm not saying it's not a complicated process i i do however uh i will push back a little bit on what you said because here's the reality poll after poll shows that if that was genuinely a concern for the harris campaign then there is a freebie out there there are are some Americans who want permanent genocide in Gaza. Definitely. They're like, oh, I love it. I want more of it.

Please give it to me. They're called evangelical Christian voters that are firmly committed to the Republican Party. Yeah. Okay. There are zero likely Democratic Party voters or currently voting for the Democratic Party that say we want more genocide in Gaza. That is not a thing. However, on the other side, there are hundreds of thousands of Americans, not just in Michigan, but all around younger Americans that would more likely vote for the Democratic Party if there was a ceasefire. And the only way to do that is by denying weapons transfers and making the phone call,

making the boss call and being like, you're done. The same boss call that Joe Biden did in 2021 after Israel started pummeling and like, you know, shooting the Associated Press building and stuff when he was like, you're done. And then the next day they were done. American foreign policy is horrible. Luckily for, I guess, either candidate, there's bipartisan support for it in Congress and Americans are trained not to care about it because if they did, they would go go crazy i think if they like hyper focused on it they'd be like oh my god we are literally the most evil empire of all time we need to stop it immediately america's by and large on the other hand while they don't care about foreign policy

are not neocons right they're not like invested in nuking iran even they might be afraid of iran because of what you know the television is telling them like you know the iranian guys are saying death to america all the time um but they don't really care like they don't want the money to go there and back in the day i think barack obama did a fantastic job of communicating that instead of doing nation building in the in iraq and afghanistan we should do nation building here that's what he said in 2008 you might have written that actually it's a great line very popular democratic line from way back when yeah but like but that's the thing carry days yeah i know but like what happened now we're just like we want to have the strongest dicked military of all time we got to have a lethal military like we got to fuck shit up we're we're restructuring the party to do like neocon agenda shit that like virtually

zero people want and even less people in dc want it now because they might want it but they just don't want it in the way that it's currently unfolding because even they recognize the danger that that presents for america's interests in the region right so who are we doing this for is a question that a lot of Americans have. If you were genuinely trying to win every voter, you would have put a Palestinian at the DNC to come out and speak. You would have had Ruva come out and speak at the DNC and endorse Kamala Harris. You would have tried to not get into the Humphrey trap and, you know, part as best as you can try to desperately show the American population that you're like, you're at least marginally different than Joe Biden on

this issue. You wouldn't be running towards Joe Biden on this issue. That's a that's even a more holistic problem, I think, with the Kamala Harris campaign in terms of like every media opportunity she has nowadays. she will be like, I'm just like Joe Biden. I am Joe Biden. I love Joe Biden. I love Dick Cheney. And the only difference I have between me and Joe Biden is that I will have a Republican in my administration. I'm like, what are you doing? Like, I get that. Like, I get that, uh, they have completely changed their, their, their messaging strategy and their strategy on the ground to like flip uh republican suburb like you know educated small business owner uh white former republican voters

and like flip them to to uh go along with like a a managed a more a less volatile republican framework like that's what they're communicating yeah uh to those people i yeah i think well okay first of all but you're leaving a lot of people on the you're leaving a lot of people aside is what basically what i'm saying i'm going to separate the policy from the politics because i think we could have an entire other conversation about the policy around gaza i think it is a has been a continues to be catastrophic policy um i think on the politics of this would have been an easy win and they should have had a palestinian american speak yeah convention um i do i was just in michigan talking to a lot of folks on the ground uh some pretty progressive

folks as well who know the state really well and they said the challenge here is we are extremely worried about uh the muslim and arab american vote in michigan we are also worried about jewish vote in michigan as well because there's a lot of they're like we're fielding calls from folks in dearborn folks folks in Aramum being like, not going to vote for the Democratic ticket. And then fielding calls from folks in the suburbs being like, I'm a Jewish Democrat. I've been Democrat all my life. I can't vote for the ticket this time because they haven't been... I know, but this is like, this is the... I'm just telling you. I don't fucking like it. Hart's conducted a study that showed that Jewish Americans list Israel as their ninth priority out of ten. It's the ninth priority in the top ten.

Now, you might say it's because both parties are – it's uniparty on Israel. And that is the case. That's just – that's directly the case. It only goes more right like it's either uh full tilt genocide plus annexation of west bank which is what donald trump is most likely going to do or full tilt genocide and maybe annexation of west bank later down the line when the republican does it and then the democratic party doesn't reverse that decision so um so on that front maybe that's the reason why he's uniparty but i don't believe that uh especially for young jewish voters as well young jews uh that are are uh not uh getting the same media diet that like

older voters have gotten across the board definitely generational yeah have the very almost exact almost exact same for sure uh issue divide on israelPalestine. It is exactly the same with every other demographic. If you're under the age of like 40, the likelihood that you think what's going on is fucked up raises spectacularly, all the way to being openly anti-Zionist. And besides that, Jewish voters as a voting bloc have always been two different brackets. The 25 percent that are give or take that is like Orthodox, not Niteri Carter Orthodox, but like, you know, ultra Orthodox Jews that are very conservative that vote consistently for the Republican party. And then, uh, and then a lot of, uh, educated, uh, Jewish voters that vote for the democratic party around 75%. And I don't think that Israel is their single issue. I, uh, and the, the polls don't show that Israel is their single issue. They care about the exact same things,

which is ironic because this goes to like almost dual loyalty territory. It's like anti-Semitic to be like, no Jews only care about Israel. Of course. Which is like what Trump likes to say. Well, exactly. Exactly.

And, and they don't, they have, you know, if you're a younger, if you're a younger Jew living in America, you care about rent in the same exact way that everyone else does. You know what I mean?

There's no difference. It's just like. And by the way, also sort of a lot of Muslim Americans and Americans. Yeah, exactly. Abortion, like all these things. Right. So that is what it's all on the margins is basically my my point and the other thing i was going to say about the jewish vote in general is that like it's not not only is it not monolithic but even if it was monolithic the areas where a lot of jewish people live are already not swing states with the exception of

pennsylvania every single michigan too but like even then i i i think that there is a far larger number i would say uh of michigan voters that would be more invested as as shown by polls like i think it's like what 25 boost that you immediately get for for uh pushing for a ceasefire a policy that like 70 of america 75 of americans are on board with they like they want it right this is objectively popular and even advocating for it even if you don't have it like even if you're not going to be able to change it is is going to is going to be a reasonable push denying weapons transfers to israel is the only way to do such a thing and i think that would be the step that would be the extra step that separates you from biden that would also add

additional pressure to the administration to change the trajectory you could also then i don't know do the other stuff that biden cares about and be like see benjamin netanyahu's dog walking you he's embarrassing you he's gonna ruin your legacy like i mean my view on this is that like bb has fucked biden on this he wants trump right so he's he's of course doing those now and then biden is fucking kamala on this because it's very hard as the there's one president at a time it's hard when you're the vice president and the president united states is in the situation room negotiating all the time. I would agree with you sort of pointlessly and poorly with Bibi Netanyahu, not showing much leverage, not using the leverage that he has.

It is real. And it's on this issue and on most issues because everyone's like, you know, she's got to separate with from him blah blah it's tricky to separate from him on issues partly because you she's vice she was vice president by his side and so then the next question after she separates uh with him on some issue is well where were you for the last couple years now you're on a separate just because you want to win an election no which is tough no i think she's i think she's like dropped enough hints early on when she did actually leak to the press that she wanted a permanent ceasefire, but then they changed her message

like last second. Like there were, there were inclinations that like she would actually be potentially more progressive. And that was another reason where I was like, maybe she is reading the room well.

And when you do that ahead of time, you're priming for that swap out. You can be like, yeah, we can be of two different minds here on foreign policy. I certainly am. I think that the president wants what's best for all Americans. And on this issue, I think like I have to respond

to, you know, what my moral compass is telling me and what the American voters are demanding. Overwhelmingly, even in the Republican Party, you got like 54% of Republicans

that want a ceasefire. Let me ask you this because you were talking about issues that are driving the election. Main issue that's driving the election for voters is the economy. Yeah. And how do you think, I think that she and Walls are handling this better than Biden did because Biden went out there and was like, no, no, I did all things accomplishments i should get credit for it blah blah everything's great economy's rosy and she's focused more on prices and costs which i think is good but what what would you be doing knowing that she is not a leftist what would you be doing differently on the on the economic stuff um so one thing that she did i thought was brilliant and i give her her flowers for that every day americans are terrified of

price caps they they're scared of like uh you know price control yeah right they're scared of that another poll that came out recently like net plus 35 favorability for going after price gouging net negative like 40 uh favorability for price caps i know it's the same fucking policy i know and americans are so stupid you know this dynamic obamacare very unpopular affordable care act provisions especially when you talk about like you know uh pre-existing conditions or companies yeah pre-existing conditions incredibly popular people are fucking stupid you know this i'm stupid everyone is stupid you have to message uh you have to message on uh one side of the issue and you have to say it over

and over and over again she came out with a brilliant strategy she said i'm going to go after people who are price gouging people are still hurting at the grocery stores prices are still entirely too high new york times immediately wrote an article like this is crazy this is a crazy policy how dare how dare kamala harris put this together and all the the neolib policy nerds and the the fact checkers were like actually this is not a thing you can remember because i've not that wasn't causing inflation the price gouging and all that yeah guess what donald trump was also calling her a venezuela harris comrade harris she's a communist her dad is a marxist professor yada yada yada that policy went from 74 approval to 83 in that time frame

nobody gives a fuck if you are literally if you're suffering if your egg prices went up okay 200 you don't give a fuck if the person that's saying like no i'm going to drive this shit down is a communist or whatever they don't care they're just like no this is great i like that lower the fucking prices that was a great way to also communicate that to the American public. Instead of saying something scary like price caps or price controls, she said price gouging. I'm going to tackle price gouging. There's a very effective way of communicating a very radical, very progressive, bold policy that Richard Nixon implemented and was very popular at the time when he did implement that. So obviously there is a way to do it and there's a way to communicate it.

And yet, just like with the Republicans are weird thing, they just dropped it. They don't talk about it. Why don't you talk about it? Like Kamala Harris got a major gift in this swap out where americans did not fault her for biden's economy right they did not fault her for the harm they did not fault her for inflation eating away at the marginal increases that they got in their wages in that same time frame when they experienced a real negative wage growth they did not fault her for that. And she could have taken advantage of that. And I think she was originally when she was communicating that like, we're going to do, we're going to go after price gougers. But I think that they're, they're failing to communicate that. Another thing, the FTC, Lena Kahn shouts out to the queen. She's doing a fantastic job.

The IRS has done a fantastic job they recently had a court case against coca-cola i think they were found to be uh avoiding taxes to the tune of 16 billion dollars that's what the 85 000 irs agents are doing they're not just like going after uh jack booted thugs coming to your house yeah they're not going after the dude on tiktok in a fucking trailer park like they're not that's ridiculous you don't have enough capital for them to like make any earnings certainly they are going after millionaires yeah right because they can't go after billionaires but they are definitely going after tax avoiders on the on the millionaire scale and that frustrates a lot of amer. There's a lot of American millionaires. But having said that, they are bringing back taxable revenue that the government had no way of bringing back. going after even small businesses or big businesses that regularly harm their their labor that that

refuse to uh that refuse to engage in good faith collective bargaining agreements that refuse to allow to unionize their workplace they refuse to pay back pay there are a lot of things that these agencies are doing every single day that we all take for granted that we don't ever think about and i think that is because since especially since the reagan era we're terrified of like big government is scary i'm not i like big government i want big government i want a good government i don't want like a shitty outsourced privatized government with the private public partnership that kamala harris touts on a regular fucking basis i despise that i want actual good federal jobs programs i I want good, large initiatives that will change the trajectory of the American economy. And Green New Deal was another one of these programs that I thought was fantastic. It actually addressed the problem, climate change, and found a pretty solid solution for it by communicating it as a

jobs program right but the republicans very quickly ate away at that by turning it into taking away your hamburgers yeah aoc is going to come to your house and kill you if you eat a hamburger is what they kept saying and americans were like oh i don't want that i like hamburgers it's the only thing i care about i'm an an American. Don't take my burger away. So, but they should have supported that. They should have pushed for it. They should have pushed back harder on Build Back Better. They should have locked up every single member of Joe Manchin's family, for example. Like, straight up.

I'm sorry. Oh, is your daughter a pharma executive and jacking up prices? Oops, she's going to jail. Hey, we got his vote on the IRA. Well, but okay, after making concessions. Well, that's the fucking, what are we going to do? For making ridiculous concessions to a guy who's supposed to be, you know, who's supposed to remember his place. You don't get to be in a committee if you play the spoiler.

Now we're going to get a Republican senator from West Virginia who's going to be 30 times worse and that's going to be the rest of our lives. No, I understand that. But while Joe Manchin, but Joe Manchin knows where his bread is buttered. He has a better opportunity for lobbying and securing, you know, favorable contracts for his immediate family members like his brother and the coal mines that they operate. When he is in an energy committee, when he's in a position within the Democratic Party as playing the role of the spoiler, the revolving, the rotating villain in the Democratic Party, he knows that he would just be a random dickhead senator if he was just any other senator from West

Virginia. He wouldn't have the same level of clout and the same level of financial opportunities for his immediate family members as a Republican. So my point always is, there are areas where you can push and pull. Republicans do this very well. When they want to push for an initiative, they're not going to have spoilers in the party. It rarely ever happens. John McCain was one of the few instances where it happened, and that's it. Beyond that, usually it's just everyone knows, everyone knows to toe the party line. So I think that it's bad governance overall from the Democratic Party. It's like bad leadership from the Democratic Party to have their full control over the government for two years get gutted by a bunch of spoilers who are very openly corrupt like kirsten cinema um you're the government

you should be able to utilize you should be able to utilize every agency at your disposal in i would say an overt political fashion if you feel the need to do so because these guys are all corrupt anyway so you know uh then use that apply the law apply the lehi law when it comes to uh israel and apply the law when it comes to joe manchin why why is it that like uh their their open graft is so so public so visible and i'm not even talking about i mean we're doing it with like bob menendez henry quayar there's plenty eric adams my favorite uh falsely uh being imprisoned for uh you know being friendly with turkish people it's fucked up but like like you do that i mean the government does uh the doj is working right make it work in the

direction of people that are uh also in violation of the law this is a common technique that i would say uh the american government utilizes against regeptai bardon for example regeptai bardon tyrant awful guy okay very corrupt america knows he's very corrupt. So when he says, I don't want Finland and Sweden to join NATO because he's always playing both sides, despite having NATO's second largest military force, I'm not going to vote for Finland and Sweden to join NATO. What does the American government do? Manhattan district attorney immediately launches a case into his like improper financial dealings. Next day, he's like, okay, nevermind. I'm going to vote for them to be in NATO. That level of corruption sets up a very easy opportunity to make people do things you want them to do every single american

politician is is engaging in this virtually every single one apply the letter of the law to these people and make them go along with your agenda that's what i think uh yeah or even if you're not going to do that you should just at least whip them. You know what I mean? No, I'm serious. No, I mean, look. I don't mean physically, but I know your audience knows. I mean, physically would be funny too.

Look, I think we're going to find out in a couple weeks. But I think our challenge here is the Senate is never going to be democratic unless we figure out a way to actually win votes in these purple and increasingly red states. And we have no, we're going to have, you know, unless tester can pull it out and maybe Sherrod will pull, I still think that Sherrod can pull it out. We're not going to have any democratic senators in red states, which is fucking crazy. They're not going to have any Republican senators in blue states except for susan collins i think is the last one uh so we have that opportunity so at some point we have to figure out a way muscling people aside whipping them aside to like get voters who are becoming like radicalized towards maga in some of these like rural small town areas to start voting Democratic again.

And the question is, in this Democratic Party aside, right, in this media environment that we're in, where we started the conversation, there's just right wing garbage everywhere. You and I were talking about this last week week that like the top of the podcast charts right wing garbage now you can pick the medium it's everywhere there's just not enough on the left in the vacuum there is misinformation at best radicalization at worst i know you've been talking we saw this with the hurricane i know you've been talking about that as well yeah um i saw this wall street journal story today by the way i don't know if you read this that uh there are these nazi groups who they basically did you know put out the disinformation about the hurricane stuff and

then they swoop in on the ground and are helping do the cleanup yeah patriot front yeah and now they're just like oh we're just here to help yeah i was watching them it's really funny because they are like there was a group i don't know if they're nazis or not but they're called the christian rangers i found their tiktok and they were doing like a like a sit rep right and uh you know it's all these like uh hoorah motherfuckers who are dressed up in all tactical gear okay and they're all armed you have to be armed um why i don't know but they were talking about how like you know local law enforcement actually wants us to be here but like fema doesn't want us to be here but then they were also talking about ways of like engaging in espionage they're like

go out there and offer a like offer a help a helping hand and then you can gain uh information on like where the staging areas are yep so you can go there and it's like dog they don't want you to be there then like even local law enforcement doesn't want you to be there if you're fucking like having to do espionage to figure out where to help and there's a good reason for it we saw it happen in north carolina north carolina uh Carolina. North Carolina National Guard had a Chinook helicopter, right? And it was trying to deliver generators. And there are obviously in a hurricane, in the aftermath of a hurricane, there are very limited areas where you can land a fucking Black Hawk, right? Those things are finicky already. They love exploding. Most helicopters that the American military has,

they love blowing up regardless so when they're when they're doing that for hurricane relief efforts they're trying to deliver generators the staging area is filled to the brim with a bunch of people that brought supplies there but they're not supposed to be there those supplies are not supposed to be there so like there's already miscommunication happening and then people are bringing in supplies good intention people are bringing in supplies but that actually ends up harming the logistical uh the logistics of a relief effort and that's precisely the reason why females like don't do it like don't only work with us yeah only work with like uh groups that we have uh

designated as like uh you know food banks or whatever and don't try to take matters into your own hands because you're gonna fall into a pit and then we're gonna have to save you too yep right and these guys don't understand that and they're incredibly narcissistic and also crazy and they're like oh well you see this like these fema helicopters military helicopters trying to kill us it was doing rotor washing on the staging area and it's like and then it's like then you know it's a it's a someone films a video and then they put it on twitter and then elon musk is tweeting it and suddenly there's a fucking and then suddenly pete buttigieg has to call him and like calm him down it's fucking nuts yeah i guess the question is like have you you've been doing this for years now have you thought about like quitting how to

yes that too or like how to start changing this media environment and the information Have you thought about like, Quitting? Yes. That too. Or like, how to start changing this media environment and the information environment. It's more than media environment. Information environment that is only getting worse to the extent now where we have like, large chunks of Americans who are just like, disassociated from reality.

Yeah. I think that like, I mean, you might not like the answer I'm gonna give you, but like, I think there is a lot of faith that the American public broadly is lost in media. I think it still comes from like a lack of education, for sure. We are getting progressively dumber and dumber as a country. I think that's by design. Every time you open up a new charter school and redirect funds from a, you know, teachers union backed public school. You're contributing to this every time you allow homeschooling to exist.

You're contributing to this every time you, you know, focus on private education. You're creating this massive gap between the average American that's getting like shittier education year after year because it's super underfunded versus, you know uh private schooling for rich kids um that's one of the major systemic issues here but then on the other side on the on the media side of things i think that a lot of people are losing faith in media and they just stop trusting it altogether and sometimes it's for bad reasons right right? Like during COVID, that was a major world changing event for a lot of Americans. And the media was actually doing the right thing in that situation where they were trying to be as protective as possible over the broadest subsects of American society by listening to scientists, epidemiologists, and listening to their warnings, which is what you're supposed to do in that situation. The media was using its propaganda purposes for good, and that still caused a lot of, that still created an information vacuum that a lot of grifters took advantage of to sell like directly

sell and market their stupid products and and sometimes even just gain clout out of it and that was a bad circumstance where the media was doing the right thing but people still hated them for doing the right thing and stopped trusting them but there's also situations like israel that a lot of newsrooms i know for a fact are completely aware of like their coverage on it is is directly at odds with what people are seeing on social media and not all of the stuff that they're seeing on social media is disinformation a lot of the stuff that they're seeing on social media is is the correct information directly from the ground and the media is engaging in a level of disinformation by omitting key details or utilizing a passive tone, right?

As though, you know, as though they usually do with cops in general. And I think that that, like what you are seeing, what you are watching unfold in front of your eyes and what you're getting from CNN or the New York Times is directly at odds with one another. And I think that causes like an entire generation to be like, well, I don't trust these guys. Like I have to tell my audience all the time, like I can't do what I do without news reporting. I still, I still rely on the New York Times. I still rely on CNN. I know like there are inherent biases in every publication, especially when it comes to state department policy like their role you have

to understand their role but there's still there's still a lot of truth that you can extract out of every single article and and the reason why i have to have this conversation is because a lot of people are like why are you looking at the new york times they lie all the time i know and it's like and it's not even like a lying new york times type of way in the way that Donald Trump complains about it. It's like objective reality when like, you know, Israel invades Lebanon. If you are trying to contextualize that as like an appropriate measure or when the pager bombs, when the pager strikes happen, that was declared an act of terror and a war crime by every single like knowledgeable UN prosecutor and knowledgeable human rights organization because it is. The former CIA director said it was an act of terror, but mainstream media celebrated it. When people see that, when they see that, like these are and these are people who obviously care about the news these are like uh well-informed

individuals who are genuinely interested in like american uh in american foreign policy they're not like the average person uh they're thoughtful individuals if you lose those guys then you're losing the people that are not so interested in uh in in mainstream media to begin with and they're just hearing it in the distance and they're like, Oh, I don't care about these guys at all. Like this is all bullshit. It's fake. And then in that vacuum you have, um, and this is like, I guess the double-edged sword of the democratization of information where you have people like myself who normally would never be able to get a media job or rather never be able to represent

truly what i genuinely believe in mainstream outlets be able to develop audiences that are are sizable enough that you get that mainstream recognition afterwards but also it opens up the uh uh it opens up the opportunity for people to just say whatever the fuck they want and just like routinely lie like and and plenty of people do take advantage of that and they do it and they do it mercilessly and relentlessly and it's uh much easier to believe a lie than it is to think about it and be like hmm is there is there like uh some underlying biases here that maybe i'm not privy to what is the motivation behind this person saying certain things like it's much easier especially if it if it leans on uh the structural

inequalities that already exist and persist in society yeah and it's it's much easier to believe misinformation when it confirms your own beliefs anyway which is what that's what i'm saying is like structural uh yeah the the pre-existing structural harms that already exist like ben shapiro does this very well in comparison to like a jd vance or a donald trump even where he's not going to be like black people are in inherently inferior and violent and that's why the police has to kill them he'll say it's common sense of course the police have to like go after criminals, right? Like he, he leans on preexisting things that a lot of Americans take for granted due to the social conditioning that they've gotten to, to, you know, demand more of

that structural violence that already exists. And, uh, sometimes I think right-wingers go above and beyond and, and drop the ball on it like uh we talked about the immigration stuff right 60 of americans want mass deportation they were waving that at the rnc they were waving mass deportation flags it's like a fucking hitler rally and and yet overwhelming majority of americans thought donald trump's statement about haitians eating cats and dogs was weird. Yeah. Because he went way above. Right. There is a level of permissible bigotry that is acceptable in mainstream discourse.

And if you go above that, if you get like real nerdy with it, like Ron DeSantis did, for example, when he was trying to make these culture war issues the prominent fixture of his campaign and he doesn't have any charisma to back that up either most people find that to be gross yeah racist people don't want to be called nazis they don't want to be called klansmen even if they complete almost completely agree with that sentiment uh they still don't want to be called that because they understand that's like kind of gross and weird i know it's a brand issue yeah yeah um so that's that's the that's the way i see it with the with the way that like the right communicates certain things um last question you were at usc recently are you talking to students they asked you about burnout uh this is something that you face all the time because you stream eight hours every day. Yeah.

Seems exhausting. You said that maybe you take off a day here or there. Is that enough to unplug? Sometimes, but this election cycle has been particularly gruesome, not even just because of the election cycle. I do think that there was a lot of interest in key moments when world-changing events were occurring yeah but i think that interest got sucked out

immediately i've noticed that at least in my own personal i mean this is a personal anecdote but i have at least noticed that in my own analytics like where people were more interested to tune in during like the hurricane coverage because that's like different and that's more interesting than just like going in every day looking at polls seeing kamala harris say something like um you know liz cheney and dick cheney support me like that i think it especially for my audience and people that are looking at like independent media in general that are very interested in what's going on in american politics like that's not as interesting for them like Like the normies don't really care. They only tune in for big moments and then they don't stick around for the rest of the election at all. They just kind of they're, they're in and out. Like I think information

spreads so much faster and people get bored of it so much faster now in this day and age that it's, it's impossible to retain people's attention and i think those are some of the reasons as to why it feels more boring this cycle especially at this stage when we're a month out 24 days out from the election and it still feels kind of uh at least anecdotally it feels kind of boring it went back to the same like guardrails very quickly it snapped back into it and then simultaneously there's obviously uh genuinely disastrous things that are unfolding all the time but people people definitely do uh people definitely do exhibit uh fatigue yeah from watching uh you know man-made horrors beyond comprehension unfold

every single day in in uh the middle east so and in this whether it's that or the drama at home we've been like just dealing with this now for the last decade in our faces more than it's ever been because of uh our phones um you think you'll be able to do this kind of content generation for years to come? Yeah, I do. But I am definitely looking forward to the election cycle ending. Like I've genuinely been looking forward to that,

I realized, because I just, I wanna do more fun shit. Like I wanna go travel and like do that kind of content that I used to always do i'm gonna play more video games like because go live your life because yeah in the in like and i live my life on camera for the most part and i'm very fortunate and very privileged to be able to do so for me i feel like uh that kind of stuff is what keeps me away from burning out because like i will still of course uh cover politics. That's my interest. That's what I love to do.

That's what I find a lot of emotional fulfillment in. And I will continue doing it. But in order to mitigate burnout, in order to stop it from happening, I realized that I wasn't doing eight hours of news coverage. Usually I'm doing six hours of news coverage, maybe two hours of video games, or four hours of news coverage,

and then a couple hours of lifestyle, culture, things like that, different fun segments that i engage in and then uh you know doing irl streams like and and participating in in other stuff when i don't do that when i don't have a healthy diet of that and it's just all news for eight to ten hours poll watching having uh you know people on to interview them and and talk to them over and over again every single day. It does definitely it does definitely start taking a toll. Yeah. You know, that makes a lot of sense. You need some you need some balance. I need to find that, too, after this fucking election. Hassan Piker, thanks as always for coming by. Yeah. Thanks for having me before we go some big news for the offline fans who've been tuning in on youtube

starting this week offline is moving to its very own youtube channel gone are the days of searching through the pod save america youtube page for the latest episode to subscribe search offline with john favreau in your YouTube search bar. Yes, I know I'm telling you to go online, but you know what? Life is full of contradictions. Check out Offline on YouTube, now on our own channel. And we are very excited to announce that Vote Save America's Build Your Own Ballot tool is back. It's your one-stop shop for everything you need to vote smarter with candidate bios and ballot measure breakdowns for everything Thank you. slash vote, fill out your address and name, and you'll instantly get access to your personalized voter guide. This message has been paid for by Vote Save America. You can learn more at votesaveamerica.com. This ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidates committee.

Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau, along with Max Fisher. It's produced by Austin Fisher and Emma Illick-Frank. Jordan Cantor is our sound editor. Charlotte Landis is our engineer. Audio support from Kyle Seglin. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer, Reed Cherlin, and Adrian Hill for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Dilan Villanueva, who film and share our episodes as videos every week. Thank you. Terima kasih.